Saturday, November 10, 2012

E-Governance: a small town from India shows the way

Few
years back, I decided to renovate my house as it needed urgent
repairs. I contacted an architect friend of mine and explained to him
my requirements. He worked on my wants and produced a plan, which was
acceptable to me. Sadly, this was the easiest part of the entire
exercise, as we still had to undergo a lengthy procedure of getting
approval of the Municipal corporation of my home town, Pune, for our
proposed plan of changes.

Pune
Municipal corporation has a very nice web site, which proudly claims
its achievements in e-Governance. I felt quite heartened by this and
told my architect friend that we can just submit our plans to the
corporation on the net. However, my architect friend, who was in the
knowledge of things, said that e-governance talk is just blah-blah!
All the procedures in the corporation remain same. Only difference is
that in addition to a plethora of forms, affidavits and paper
drawings of plans, we also need to submit a CD of a prescribed
software giving same details that are given in other documents. I
felt very discouraged but there was really no choice.

In
India, many Government and Semi Government organizations like
Passport office, land records office, etc. talk a lot about
e-governance. But in almost all cases, it is just a lip service paid
to fulfill an internal Government order. With this kind of backdrop
in my mind, it was rather hard for me to believe that a small town in
UttarPradesh state of India, has actually managed to achieve full
e-governance that is 100 % transparent, just with 3 computers and a
scanner and that too unofficially, at the initiative of Mr. Alok
Kumar Singh, executive officer of the local town area committee. The
town has a
web portal,
which is not even official or financed from Town committee funds.

Ashrafpur
Kichaucha, is a small town of 15,865 people in Ambedkar Nagar
district of Uttar Pradesh. It is famous for the 625-year-old shrine
of Sufi saint Hazrat Makhdoom Shah Ashrafi. Mr. Alok Kumar Singh
took charge of the administration of this town as Executive officer,
Local town area committee in 2006. At his initiative, a web portal
has been created that could be considered as ultimate in
e-governance. What is also important is the fact that it has been
created by him without any financial help from the government or any
other agency, using just three computers and a scanner.

Web
portal (www.npakmakdoom.com)
of Asharafpur Kichaucha town municipal body, known as ‘Nagar
panchayat Ashraf Kichaucha,’ provides complete access to any of its
residents to data like, Birth and death records of every single
citizen, records of each of the 39 types of licences issued by the
civic body, all building plans, all official files, every payment
that a citizen makes to the local body and few other things.
Explaining the need for such a portal, Executive officer Alok Singh
says that “When I joined the town area office as Executive Officer in June 2006, I
used to see illiterate, helpless people running from pillar to post
even to get their papers verified. There was corruption, they could
not read the papers which were handed to them. So I planned to put in
place a system so that they did not have to suffer.”

Town
committee's web portal has changed all that. It not only displays
details of licenses to run shops, liquor outlets, passenger vehicles,
restaurants, or vendor registration but also the lists of every
payment that a citizen makes to the local body.

A
complete listing of records such as land mutations, birth and death,
family disputes or succession, can be seen by the residents and they
can take print outs. These records are constantly updated,
eliminating any scope concealing any of the records. The town people
also can see uploaded details such as the list of people who are
below poverty line, works done by the district urban development
agency, pensioners’ records, town plans, advertisement by-laws,
important orders and even the register of local municipal body from
the days before 1984 when the town had only a 'Gram Sabha” or
village committee.

The
town committee felt the need to issue numbered family identification
cards, to the head of each resident family as at any given time
there are at least 40,000 outsiders present in the town, because of
the shrine. By entering the card number on the link given on the town
web portal, full details of the family, such as address, names of
members, their sex, date of birth can be obtained easily. This card
has proven to be a good enough identification proof and local police
accepts it if anyone produces it at the time of any checking, though
Government agencies may not accept it as valid identification proof.

The
portal also has information about the town’s dargah, along with
its history and pictures. Any resident can get an access to the maps
provided on the portal to find out addresses and other such details.

After
launching the portal municipal committee observed that there was a
greater willingness on parts of the residents to submit their
building plans to the town committee for approval. In 2006 hardly any
building map was submitted to the town committee for approval. Even
if someone wanted to submit the plans, the municipal staff was
reluctant to give permissions to anyone. Now everyone makes it a
point to submit building plans, even if they decide to add one room
to their house for the simple reason that now there is a record that
can be seen by anyone. Besides compliance, it is also generating
additional income for the town committee. The revenue of the town
area committee has gone up from 0.675 Million Rupees in 2009 to
3.581 Million Rupees in 2012.

The
District Magistrate of Ambedkar Nagar District of Uttar Pradesh
state, Mr. Nidhi Kesarwani praises Mr. Alok Singh's pioneering
efforts and hopes that in future the web portal is developed further.
He is also trying to get Government funding for the project. Mr. Alok
Singh also wants that the web portal be treated as an official
portal, which would add to its power, potential and usefulness to
the residents.

This
is absolutely fantastic effort by a Government officer, who is not
even part of the elite Indian Administration service but a state
cadre official. Emulating and extending Mr. Alok Singh's good work,
first to state level and then to national level could bring in
tremendous improvement in functioning of municipal bodies all over
the country; a much desired change.